Rainbow

More water in the street

After all that rain, seems we missed the rivers in the street.  No matter.  Seems the water pipe outside my neighbor's house broke, again.  This happened about a year after I moved here and was fixed after a time, but for nearly a year after still looked like a construction site, with the sidewalk tiles piled to one side and an open sandy pit in the middle.  This time around resulted in gallons and gallons of water, just pouring into the street.  Visualize draining an Olympic swimming pool with a hose the diameter of your head.  The problem should be easy to fix, after all the pipes are only a few feet below the surface of the ground, but call after call to Embasa, the water company, got no answer - it was a Friday afternoon when it began to pour out water, after all. 

So Sunday afternoon, finally, after two days of who knows how much clean water is running down the street into the open sewer storm drain at the end of the road, some guys with a small bulldozer and a dump truck came out to dig a big hole and stop the flow.  This process took the better part of an afternoon, during which for some of the time, the workers just sat on the curb with their bare feet in the running water as it went down the gutter.  All that is left behind now is the pile of sidewalk squares, a lot of dirt, and a roughly covered hole. Lets see how many months the pile of tiles will remain untouched.  Doesn't matter I guess, after all, we all prefer to walk in the street. 

Some local photos

None taken by me, but quite telling.  This is this week, and last week, in Bahia.

United Nations getting wet

Not that you can tell much from this picture through a rainy window, on a rainy day, where traffic and flooding is sucking so bad that the city is nearly shut down, but there is a UN conference going on here right now.  According to this site, it is the United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice.  If my suspicions are right, all these poor people are meeting in tents and inside the building with the loudes tin roof ever in the rain, and are getting water logged walking between their probable hotel (Holiday Inn, the only one in Salvador, across the street) and the convention center.  Last week a huge display of holey lycra was strung up in front, covering the bottom half of this very large building and I wondered why.  Now I think it might be an attempt to decorate for the conference in the traditional manner we do here (minus the tons of balloons), but the quantity of fabric and the hieght of the building were so great that no one bothered to really do the job.  The result is a very peculiar spectacle, visible all the way down to the ocean front.

April showers 2010

About a year ago, I put up a post about the horrible rain and flooding and what not.  Apparently this will now be a yearly or perhaps monthly post.  The rain is back.  It's already caused hundreds of deaths down south.  And it's come to call in Bahia again (although from what I was told yesterday, the news casters are now saying these last three days of rain is just the cold front coming in and are not even dumping what was predicted, YET).  There are parts of the city that have been without power since the rain started on Wednesday and are still, as far as I can tell.  It's kind of the talk of the town.  (fellow Bahia blogger)

So far it's not nearly as bad as it was last year, where the end of my road disappeared, the wall at the French school down the street collapsed, and the sewer over flowed all over the street.  At least, not yet.

There is also the new characteristic of frequent lightning and thunder, not usually a staple of storms here in Bahia.  You have to admit, the clouds coming in over the ocean are pretty scary looking.

Not a scarecrow

At the risk of republishing a photo (as you can see it is from 2006) that you have already seen, meet Judas.  Part of the Easter tradition here is to blow up the biblical betrayer of Jesus.  You can see these cute little guys for sale at the side of the road, full of fireworks (have you noticed that our holidays almost always include some fireworks?).  You  have a big Easter party with your extended family, read a poem about what Judas leaves each person (he only leaves unpleasant things and is definitely written to evoke a laugh or two), and then light that sucker on fire.  It's kind of gruesome on many levels, not the least of which is the risk he will explode on someone and blow off a few fingers.  As I'm pretty sure I wrote a post about this somewhere several years ago and I have several other things on my list today, I won't go into too much detail.  This isn't your fuzzy bunny Easter down here - we don't look for baskets with chocolate bunnies, wear pretty spring dresses, or have quiet family dinners; we give our kids a large chocolate egg (no searching involved), let them eat it and a bunch of other crap, run around like while animals, and then blow up a biblical figure made of fireworks.  At least it's a good time. 

While we're waiting for Carnaval Pics...

A friend just sent me a link to this.  Prepare to be grossed out.  Yes folks, this is Carnaval. 

Carnaval is coming.  I'm sure I don't need to explain what it is - even those who are newbies to Brasilian culture know about Carnaval.  Part of the big deal here in Bahia is to go out with the Blocos or to watch the Trioelectricos go by from a Camarote.  I generally don't go to either of these options; I am a pipoca girl.  This year, however, I was gifted the key to enter the "exclusive" club.  In order to get behind the ropes or gates of these choice places, you have to pay for it and wear the proper attire.  Enter the abadá. 

As far as I can tell, these things are generally made of the hottest, most uncomfortable fabric that exists, perhaps in order to put most of the R$200-R$2000 you put into acquiring one into the pockets of those who run the establishment.  Often they come as a one-size-fits-all gigantic sleeveless sack like object, with holes cut somewhere for your arms, and another hole somewhere for your neck, sometimes with actual finished hems, sometimes something just sort of "hem like." They are ugly.  And usually big.  Any why not, as you will probably only wear it just this one day because of the amount of sweat, pee and other disgusting substances you will get all over it when you go out in to the biggest street party ever.  Disposable clothing!

  

A big temporary business here is revamping these one-time-wear shirts into something one might actually want to put on your body (ignoring the kind of fabric it is, of course).  I have no idea what the current going rate is, but I suspect it is around R$15-R$20 a shirt, depending on embellishments and what not.  There are rules you have to follow to do it, I guess - some things cannot be removed or changed at all.  Each bloco or camarote may have different levels of abadás that allow you to do different things, with distinguishing characteristics and colors for each day and level.  Maids, nannies, and anyone who has a sewing machine at home may try to make some extra cash pre-Carnaval by "reformando abadás." Signs pop up all over the city with phone numbers offering this service. 

Just for fun this year, I decided to try a few myself.  They came out pretty cute in my opinion.

And if you're headed to Campo Grande on Tuesday, be sure to look for me on the top of the Trio;)

Lavagem do Bomfim

Want to walk 10 KMs in the hot sun? Drink lots of beer and pee on the street? Nope, I'm not talking about Carnaval, our most popular event for drinking lots of beer in the hot sun and peeing in the street, I'm talking about Lavagem do Bomfim. Each year a group of Bahianas sets out way down by Mercado Modelo and walks the distance on the streets to the Church of Bomfim to wash the steps with lavender scented water, some assortment of flowers and plants and so on. This tradition, steeped in religious meaning and importance is a great excuse for a party (like anything here is) - so the streets are also populated with beer sellers, churrasco de gato (who knows what the mystery meat is) and some very specific things for the event like hats to keep the sun off, sunscreen and the famous Bomfim tapes. You walk the distance either to pay back for a miracle in your life, or to ask for one. Or just to drink. I did this walk myself about 3 years ago and didn't even feel the distance pass for all the beer. This year my husband went and brought me back a flower he found along the way.


Many happy returns!

What, I can't park here?

Streets here are kind of created as a second thought for much of the developing sections of the city. Poor people don't own cars, so why make streets a usable width? I have gone down streets here that were only a few inches wider than our car and that turned at odd angles that a typical American would never think of driving up. There are streets that I fear trying to drive a car up, their angles are so steep (wouldn't want to walk up them either) and you have to use 1st gear to get up for the whole length. There is also one somewhere that I swear I will take a picture of someday that continues at a steeper and steeper angle down a hill and abruptly turns into stairs and goes down to a sidewalk below. It's not really a street per-say, but it gets used that way eventually as the area develops and the city sees it fit to pave it with asphalt to try to avoid the typical mudslide situations we get with our rainfall.

I spent 30 minutes in a car trying to move about 40 meters. I was lucky to not have waited more time than that as this was NOT during rush hour. Traffic would sit unmoving, then move up one car's worth, then sit again. The reason for the slow down was soon revealed -

That's a large truck loaded with cinder blocks. This is one of the typical streets that should run one lane in each direction - really only wide enough for one lane in one direction (but Brasilians are amazing at their ability to fit many cars in many directions in places most Americans wouldn't dare to try), not to mention that people park on both sides of the street, halfway onto side walks... or not - it typically slows and speeds up according to how people are driving, parking, and how many bars have put tables into the street for patrons. It is somewhere in Boca do Rio, much of which is a developed/ing lower middle class section of the city. Seems someone was going to build... something... with a lot of cinder blocks. So they hired a truck and the truck brought them and here they sit, parked, on the street, taking up more than half of it. No driver in sight. And it wasn't just one truck, there was another one behind it, also parked in the same fashion. And another. And finally, the real reason for the hold up.

The fourth truck, going the other direction, was trying to park. You can see just beyond, that bus, probably sitting there with no way to get out, just like we were. At least our lane wasn't blocked by 4 trucks loaded with cinder blocks. Our lane of traffic slowly moved on. Their lane, going the opposite direction, just sat and sat. Bumper to bumper. I wonder how long.